Theme Essay by Linda Marino
Tales of the Cooking Book Club
Several years ago, two women around my age moved into our tight-knit, urban community. To get to know others in the neighborhood, one of them decided to start a book club.
At first, I resisted joining, worried that my unpredictable schedule (I own a catering company) would keep me from reading the books or coming to the meetings. But all my neighborhood friends signed up, so I did, too.
Soon after, I was given a copy of The Book Club Cook Book by one of my catering clients, a coauthor of the book. It features short reviews of a hundred books, along with recipes for foods mentioned in their pages. It also profiles book clubs across the country that incorporate food into their meetings in creative ways.
And here I’d thought our book club was the only one that did that. As a group of sociable women all interested in food and cooking, we’d already evolved into preparing communal dinners around the books we read.
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Our group meets once a month, and we take turns hosting. The host prepares a main course, and others bring side dishes, appetizers, wine, and dessert.
The dinner menu is up to the host. If a specific dish is mentioned in the book, finding a recipe is all that's necessary. Other times, the theme of the book dictates what is served.
When we read People of the Book—a 2008 novel by Geraldine Brooks about the Sarajevo Haggadah, one of the earliest illuminated Hebrew manuscripts—the meeting host prepared a traditional Passover meal. It included matzo ball soup, braised brisket, potatoes, asparagus, and a fruit compote. We topped it off with macaroons.
I’m both a professional chef and an amateur food historian, so when it’s my turn to cook, I have as much fun reading cookbooks and researching the cultural aspects of the food as I have preparing the meals.
In The Road, Cormack McCarthy’s 2006 post-apocalyptic novel, the characters journey through a devastated landscape, hungry nearly all the time. At one point, they miraculously come across a bunker full of canned meat, vegetables, and fruits. This food, carried with them in an old cart, sustains them for a short while as they go onward. For our meeting, I cooked a comparable meal of smoked ham and poached pears and served Coca Cola, another discovery of the travelers.
It was easy to plan a meal for our discussion of The Last Chinese Chef, a 2007 novel by Nicole Mones about elite cuisine in modern China. Starting with both the recipes Mones provides and the food references in the book, I researched classic Chinese dishes and prepared a feast of crab soup, Ants Climb a Tree (noodles with pork), crispy aromatic chicken with star anise, and a tapioca pudding with plum sauce. My husband, CJ, added a slideshow of his spectacular photos from a trip to China.
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, Helen Simonson’s 2010 debut novel, includes a reference to blancmange, an old French classic right out of Escoffier. It sounds luscious and sophisticated, but it's basically a milk-based custard thickened with gelatin. I made a blancmange for the book group and served it with raspberry puree. The texture was “spongy.” However, it really did go with the feel of the book, Major Pettigrew being an older, conventional type.
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Three years after its formation, our book group has settled into a comfortable routine. It still includes all but one of the original members. Many of us are friends as well as neighbors. We’re all professionals—teachers, academics, and businesswomen—although a few of the women have recently retired and are rediscovering themselves through new activities.
When we first started the group, we thought it would be best if at least one member had read the recommended book, but we’ve since changed that rule. We alternate choosing books, and we try to keep the subjects diverse and varied.
You may be surprised to hear that the potential for a good meal doesn’t enter into the decision. Some books we’ve read don't mention food of any kind, and, in that case, the host prepares whatever she wants.
At our meetings, the first hour is spent talking about the book. The conversation can be lively, especially if some of us liked the book and others didn’t. Occasionally, our individual politics, religions, or ethics will lead to impassioned debates, although we try to follow a protocol of not interrupting others. Dinner follows, often beginning with a discussion of the meal’s relationship to the book.
The group doesn't meet in July and August, although we do read a book. Last summer, it was Tess of the d'Urbervilles, the 1891 classic by Thomas Hardy.
When we met up again in September, our meeting and dinner host made a classic beef stew. For dessert, I provided a plain butter cake served with fresh berries and, of course, heavy cream. Those dairy scenes in Tess were compelling.
Publishing information:
- The Book Club Cook Book by Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp (Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2004).
- Please Look After Mom by Kyung-sook Shin, originally published in slightly different form in South Korea by Changbi Publishers, 2008 (published in translation in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, 2011).
- People Of The Book by Geraldine Brooks (Viking Penguin, 2008).
- The Road by Cormack McCarthy (Alfred A. Knopf, 2006).
- The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2007).
- Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson (Random House, 2010).
- Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (first published in 1891 in a censored and serialized version in the British illustrated newspaper, The Graphic).
Art Information
- “Book Group” and “Korean Kimchi Pancakes” © CJ Allen; used by permission
- “Blancmange” © Diane Duane; Creative Commons license
Linda Marino is a professional chef, trained in the United States and in Annecy, France. She began her career at the Modern Gourmet, the Boston-area restaurant owned by Madeleine Kamman and went on to run a cooking school with a colleague at the French Library in Boston.
In 1988, she partnered with Dianne Hartman, owner of La Bonne Maison Catering. They're still partners, and La Bonne Maison is a thriving catering company based in Watertown, Massachusetts.
Linda is an avid reader of books of all sorts.
